Mark Hamill to play a warrior monk in TV drama series

Mark Hamill is going to play a warrior-monk knight again. Only this time, he’ll carry a sword instead of a lightsaber.

The Star Wars actor has signed onto season 2 of History’s medieval drama series Knightfall, where he’ll play Talus, “a battle-hardened Knight Templar veteran of the Crusades, who survived captivity for ten years in the Holy Land and is tasked with training the new initiates to the Order.”

The Knights Templar are considered one of the likely inspirations for George Lucas’ Jedi Knights (an early script of Star Warsreferred to his guardians of the galaxy as “Jedi Templar”), so this casting brings Hamill full circle.

If you haven’t heard of Knightfall, well, it’s a thing, and History just renewed it — with a new showrunner, Aaron Helbing (Spartacus: War of the Damned), taking over for Dominic Minghella.

Tom Cullen stars (Downton Abbey) in the drama going inside “the medieval politics and warfare of the Knights Templar, the most powerful, wealthy and mysterious military order of the Middle Ages who were entrusted with protecting Christianity’s most precious relics. The story of the Knights Templar has never been fully told until now, and Knightfall goes deep into the clandestine world of this legendary brotherhood of warrior monks to learn who these knights were, how they lived, and what they died believing.”

Also joining the cast for season 2 is Tom Forbes (The Bastard Executioner) as Prince Louis, “the violent and unpredictable son of King Philip and heir to the throne” and Genevieve Gaunt (The Royals) as Isabella, “the daughter of King Philip and well on her way to becoming the woman who history would call ‘the she-wolf of France.'”